i'm danielle pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the american enterprise institute. welcome to the first in our annual series of state of the union policy event. every year, aei scholars come together. we look forward to the challenges of the year ahead and policy questions that have been raised, and are likely to come up, and try and look forward a little bit, think a little bit about what the right answers are to the questions that are being posed. one of the few events we do with only aei scholars, although i'm very happy to be together with them. i will lay out for you what the other events are at the end of the session but let me introduce the folks who are here with me at the table. first on the far left, so to speak, is -- sort. on the far left is a resident scholar at aei and asian studies, specializing in japan although he does a lot of work on pacific and air power as well. next to him is fred kagan, another resident scholar at the american enterprise institute, the christopher demuth chair, and the executive director of our critical threats proj